A Wolf Apart

by Maria Vale

  Evie’s eyes narrow, burning like fire and ice, with a warning to her Deemer.

  The thing I thought I saw when I fought Tiberius is real. Victor doesn’t like change, doesn’t like what’s happening to the Great North. He wants it to go back to the way it was, when we were all, at the very least, wolves.

  Because I am descended from the wolves of Mercia, he thinks I am an ally. I know how to speak our tongue. I know our laws. I studied them for years at the feet of the ancient Sigeburg, our previous Deemer. What he doesn’t know is that I am an abomination much more terrible than a half Shifter. I am a monster beyond his worst imaginings.

  I am a wolf who loves a human.

  “Say it, Deemer.” I bow my head and whisper softly in his ear. He suddenly lurches to his toes. I squeeze tighter on the vulnerable sac in my left hand. “Say it.”

  “Wes þu gebledsod,” he starts with a squeak.

  Be thou blessed. Be thy body as strong as the tree. Be thy will as hard as the mountain. Be thy young as wild as the storm. Be thy land as plentiful and untouched as the stars. Be the lead of men as soft as snow upon thy fur. Be thou blessed.

  I let go, my left hand covering my right, my head still lowered. Wes þu gebledsod, I murmur with the rest.

  Victor whips around to face me. “You,” he whispers, shaking the crimp out of his clenched scrotum, “have made a fatal mistake.”

  “Fatal? Is that what you really mean? Are you challenging me, Deemer? Please, I will not lose.”

  “You lost once,” he spits out. “When you needed to win.”

  “I have never lost when I needed to win.”

  He stomps away, followed by Lorcan and those two other young Alphas.

  Had he been any other Pack, I would have challenged him in the paddock, but I can’t. I am a lawyer. I understand the need to protect judges from intimidation and influence, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t dearly love to tear his miserable hide to shreds.

  The room has cleared, leaving only Gabi, the ob-gyn, who has once again taken time off from her Offland practice, and Alex, the radiologist who is fitting Silver with an ultrasound holster so that he can give her as much warning as possible that her progeny are switching species.

  At the door, I watch Tiberius hold her hand. He looks momentarily at the four little bodies in her body, but then his eyes go careening around the Boathouse, searching for something solid and real and comforting that isn’t the woman who is both the source of his strength and his ultimate weakness.

  Then I lope back. Leaning down, I mark Tiberius, first along one cheek, then along the other.

  As I leave, Silver gives me a sad, hopeful smile full of sharp teeth.

  • • •

  I’d always dismissed the 14th’s remaining Alpha as an awkward, oversize child. But I was wrong. His speech and movement may be crude and slow, but Eudemos is surprisingly thoughtful. When I warned him about Victor, he nodded once. He already has a rotation set up to watch the Boathouse, making sure that Tiberius and Silver, members of his echelon, are not disturbed during this already difficult time.

  “The Alpha needs me to return Offland. It won’t be long, but Celia knows that the 9th is also at your disposal, if you should need it.”

  Back once more in my car, I turn my phone on and slip it into the mount. I wrap my arm around the passenger seat and begin to back up.

  Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa in 27 days.

  Homeward has reset.

  Chapter 30

  Whether it is because of my run-in with Janine on Friday, or because Maxim has somehow let them know that I am on enforced vacation or simply because I am not dressed in my usual suit and tie, when I arrive in the cold, antiseptic lobby, the nervous security guards do not let me in.

  “Just call Dahlia at reception.”

  There is a lot of whispered conversation behind the front desk. Blocked by the turnstile, I am, for once, too far away to hear what they’re saying.

  “Or just call my office.” I give them Janine’s extension. “Janine’s actually the one I need to talk to.”

  The guard shoots a worried look at the head of the morning security detail.

  “Mr. Trianoff is coming down,” says the head of security. He’s usually friendly, but now he does nothing but stare at the big screen divided into many tiny screens, one of which must show an elevator coming down from HST.

  “Where have you been?” Maxim says, grabbing my arm.

  “You told me to take time off. I’m taking time off. See?” I pull my arm from his grasp, readjusting my stand-collar jacket over my T-shirt, making sure to cover the marks of the bear’s claws at my neck. “I wouldn’t be here at all, but there’s a personal matter I need to take care of.”

  “Well, you better come upstairs with me.” Maxim turns to the guards and nods once. This time when I approach the turnstile, it opens.

  A young man who smells like meatball subs and an internship starts to follow us into the elevator.

  “Take the next one,” Max says, blocking the doors, his finger jammed hard into the DOOR CLOSE button.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s is going on here, Max?”

  “Janine’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Dead. Murdered. I’m not supposed to tell you anything, but I need you to promise me that you didn’t have anything to do with this. HST does not need this kind of publicity.”

  “Thank you for your very touching concern, Max. But of course I didn’t have anything to do with it! I haven’t seen her since—”

  The elevator door opens on a man in a sapphire-blue tie, hurriedly knotted so that the narrow end is backward and sticks out beneath the front.

  “So this,” he says, “is the elusive Elijah Sorensson?”

  He has pale borders around his receding hairline and a stray piece of pink glitter at his temple.

  “Elijah, this is Detective Conradi. He is directing the—”

  “Mr. Sorensson, perhaps we could talk in your office?”

  He smells like steel and eggplant pizza and hostility.

  I have a very bad feeling about this.

  “Elijah,” Maxim says, trying his level best to play the Alpha, “HST is doing everything it can to cooperate in the face of this tragic loss of one of its prized employees.”

  Distracted, I lead Conradi past the waiting area with its bottled water and potted plants and twigs bent into unnatural shapes. The hall between my large, light office and Janine’s smaller windowless one is littered with cards and LED candles and balloons and bodega flowers and drugstore teddy bears.

  Conradi shakes his head when I point him toward my supersize chairs. Instead, he stands, feeling for something inside his jacket pocket. He holds his hand there.

  “Ms. Unger’s family is apparently on vacation, so we have not been able to reach them, but since you were closest to the victim…” He pulls his hand out and slides a photograph over to me. “I’m wondering if you can make a positive identification.”

  I look at the picture and back at Conradi. I can’t possibly make an identification, and he knows it. He just wanted to see how I reacted to this skull without a face.

  I am Pack, and we know death, honor it. Death doesn’t shock me, but torture, that uniquely human activity, always does.

  This was not a good death, and Janine, that spoiled child, suffered.

  “Of course I can’t.”

  “How about this?” With one finger, he slides a picture of Janine’s torso framed by the cold metal of the autopsy table. The dragon with its jaws at either side of her perfect apple-seed nipple seems especially garish against the paleness of her bled-out skin.

  “Mr. Sorensson?”

  I push the picture back to him. “Yes.” It’s pointless to lie. “That’s her.”

  “So can I take it from your
reaction that you two have been intimate?”

  I say nothing.

  “Maybe I’m not being clear enough. Can I take it from your reaction that you had sex with your assistant?”

  God, that sounds pathetic. I can’t deny it; enough people knew already. Janine was hardly discreet. There’s no way to explain to him that it wasn’t lust, that I wouldn’t have done it at all, except for that crippling hunger for castorine liver.

  “A few times, and not for weeks. Months. It was stupid and utterly meaningless.”

  “Meaningless? It’s interesting that you would say it was meaningless. According to several of your coworkers, you two fought about who she had gone to lunch with on Friday.”

  It’s not a question, so I don’t answer.

  “Mr. Sorensson?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t understand the question.”

  Conradi slides both pictures into his pocket. “What did you two fight about on Friday?” The corner must have gotten stuck, because he opens his jacket, shuffling the photographs around.

  Almost everyone on this side of reception must have heard us arguing, so again, it is pointless to deny it. “I was angry because I had reason to believe she had betrayed confidential communications.”

  “Are you saying this was about attorney-client privilege?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Yet several of your coworkers said that during your fight, you yelled that you ‘smelled him’ on her. That doesn’t really sound like a question of attorney-client privilege. I want you to understand, I’m not making any judgments—these things happen all the time—I’m just trying to get your side of the story.”

  Please. Do not try to play a player.

  “Whatever it sounded like, I certainly wasn’t jealous. I’m not lying to you. I did have sex with her, and I regretted it almost immediately. I would have been relieved if she’d found someone else.”

  “Do you know who she was meeting that afternoon?”

  “No idea. She sent me a text around eleven thirty saying she had an emergency and then left the office.”

  “She sits there?” He motions to Janine’s office. I nod. “Is that normal for her to text you from her office?”

  “No. She didn’t usually text me from her desk.”

  “And do you still have it? The text?”

  “Possibly, I don’t know.” I pull my phone from my jacket pocket. Unlocking it, I find her text and pass it to him.

  He stares at my phone.

  “Why do you have her listed as Janine (Dragon)?” he asks, holding the screen up to me.

  Taking it back, I go to my contacts to show him that Janine (Dragon) is followed by Janine (Redhead).

  “Now you know. But being a sleazy shit does not make me a sadist or a murderer.”

  “No need to be defensive. I’ll say it again: I’m not trying to imply anything. I’m simply trying to find information. Where were you Friday night?”

  “I was at the Plaza. There was a charity event there.”

  “What was it called?”

  “Its name?”

  “Yes. What was the name of the charity event you went to on Friday?”

  “I don’t know the real name. Everyone calls it L-Cubed.”

  “I don’t call it ‘L-Cubed.’”

  “Well, your chief of police certainly does.” It is a basic part of establishing one’s self within the human hierarchy. See? Here are the people I know. Here are the people who will return my phone calls, send me invitations, greet me on the street. All of them human variations of Pack markings but without real meaning. None of these people would protect me if I needed it.

  And mentioning the chief of police only seems to make Conradi pricklier.

  “There are people who can vouch for you?”

  “Dozens.”

  He slides a piece of paper over to me. “If you could give me some names. I don’t need dozens. Maybe five.”

  I start to write down names. Lawyers in good standing mostly. The deputy mayor. I leave the chief out of it.

  “And did you go home alone?”

  I’d love to be able to say I had, but I can’t. With the doormen and security cameras in my building, it would be too easy to confirm.

  “No, I didn’t go home. I went Upstate for a long weekend. I really needed some time off. You can check my E-ZPass.” I lean back in my chair. “So you see, Mr. Conradi—”

  “Detective,” he says sharply.

  “Detective Conradi, I wasn’t even in the city.”

  His expression, never warm, had gotten noticeably colder. Now it has turned frigid.

  “Seeing that Ms. Unger was murdered in Hudson—in Upstate—I think we will be taking a look at your E-ZPass.”

  I slide the list of names who saw me at L-Cubed over to him and toss the pen back into the drawer. “Why is the NYPD handling this if it happened in Hudson?”

  “Hudson’s a small department; she was last seen alive in Manhattan. It makes sense to work both ends. More so now.”

  Now. Because now Conradi has set his sights on me. I know what he sees. He sees a man who makes a fortune circumventing the laws he puts his life on the line to enforce. A man with bespoke outerwear who disdains his crummy off-the-rack affair that gaps awkwardly at his neck. A man with no wedding ring and so many women that he needs mnemonics to remember which Janine is which. A man who doesn’t understand the fearful responsibility that goes with being the father of a little girl whose pink sparkle he unknowingly wears. A little girl like Janine (Dragon) once was.

  There’s nothing I can say to change his mind about me. I have too many secrets that aren’t mine to share, and my single confidence, the thing that is mine alone, involves the woman I love. I cannot, will not, expose her to him. I will not let him poison her against me. Thea and my wild. I will protect them both.

  I reach for the door. “I think we’re finished here.”

  One by one, he pops his knuckles. “Those are some nasty-looking scratches on your neck, Sorensson. How’d you get them?”

  Shit. I tug at my jacket again, pulling the collar against my neck. “Fight with a bear.”

  I’m tired and pissed off, but the second the words are out of my mouth, I know I’ve made a mistake. I try to play nonchalant, pulling a tissue from the box that Janine always put on my desk to wipe the screen of my phone.

  “Listen to me, asshole,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t think I haven’t seen plenty of people like you. People who think they’re invulnerable, untouchable. And you know what? You people always, always fuck up, and when you do, I’m going to be there, because from now on, I am going to be on you like shit on a shoe.”

  With a quick flick of my wrist, the balled-up tissue goes dead into the middle of the trash can.

  “You have no idea what I’m thinking, so let me tell you what I know. I know that you have nothing but circumstantial evidence. I know that if I had anything to do with Janine’s death, I would have come up with a better alibi. And I know that every day you waste hassling me cuts your chances of finding her actual killer in half.”

  He follows me into the hall. Clearly, the details of Janine’s death are not generally known, because in a tragic miscalculation, someone has added a bright-red helium balloon to the pile at her office that says I MISS YOUR FACE ALREADY.

  It bumps into Conradi’s head, and he bats at it irritably.

  “Don’t leave town, Sorensson.”

  “Are you detaining me?”

  “I’m asking you to stick around. In case I have more questions.”

  “If you’re not arresting me, you can’t tell me what to do.” I start to walk away.

  “You want me to arrest you?” Conradi says to my back.

  “You can’t. You don’t have enough to make it stick.”

  “Mayb
e, maybe not,” he says, following me through the door to the reception area. “But forty-eight hours in a holding cell has a way of making people a lot more cooperative. It’s a dog-eat-dog world in there.”

  I push the button for the elevator.

  “Good thing,” I say, staring straight ahead, “that I am a wolf.”

  • • •

  As cool as I tried to seem, I am not. Zigzagging through the streets around the courts, I quickly find one of the many stores that sell burner phones.

  “So you did not kill her?” Evie says when I reach her.

  “No! It was not good. She suffered. Did Tiberius—”

  “Tiberius has not left Silver’s side for more than a minute at a time. Hold on.” I hear a wolf’s voice and the cadence of a question but not the question itself. “Call this number, and ask for Mary Jean,” she says to the questioner. Then the dull click of a pencil into a cup before she returns to me.

  “How is Quicksilver doing?”

  “As well as can be expected. I had a hard enough time with just two. With four, she is getting no rest at all. She is strong of marrow, and it was her choice not to cull. Tiberius, though, has no control. There is nothing for him to do but watch her fight for what he has planted inside her. If she does not survive, he will die. Yes?”

  Her murmured voice blurs through her hand over the mouthpiece. I cannot hear the words, but her tone is severe.

  “I have to get off. I’m presuming you understand that this needs to be kept Offland?”

  It’s not enough that Evie has to deal with the daily running of the Pack. She has recovered her strength now, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t wolves willing to test a new leader. She has a lying-in, the rebuilding. Victor. She does not need the police following my fuckups to the Homelands.

  “Yes, Alpha. I understand.”